Video Game / Phantom Brave

"You'll go no further! For her sake, I will not fail!"

— Ash

A 2004 Strategy RPG game from Nippon Ichi, creators of Disgaea and La Pucelle for the PlayStation 2. It was the first game to be localized in North America by the company's American branch.

When Marona was a child, her parents and their employee Ash were killed by demons. In desperation they used their magic and a plea to God to turn Ash into a Phantom, a type of ghost caught between Life and Death, to protect Marona as she grew up. Like her parents, Marona is a Chroma; she is able to summon the spirits of the dead and give them temporary physical forms by possessing inanimate objects. For this, the people in Marona's world think of her as The Possessed One who can kill them all, so naturally they go out of their way to insult and belittle her.

Game mechanics aside, Marona's a rather sweet girl who loves everyone, and who seems cheerfully uncomprehending of the fear she provokes in others. Which means her neighbors have someone to protect them from the dark forces that killed her parents.

In 2009, it received an Updated Re-release for the Wii, subtitled We Meet Again, with a new chapter called "Another Marona", some new characters and a bonus art disc in a Collector's Edition. PlayStation Portable also received a re-release in 2011, subtitled The Hermuda Triangle. Lastly, it was released as "Phantom Brave PC" on Steam in July 2016. There was also an MMORPG spin-off, Phantom Brave Online. In 2021, a remaster of The Hermuda Triangle, alongside Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, was released as part of the Prinny Presents NIS Classics (Volume 1).

This game provides examples of:

• All of the Other Reindeer: Yes, they're that bad. Unlike many examples, though, they do eventually realize that Marona is their only hope for survival and that they should be nice to her. The fact that she eventually makes friends with an anthropomorphic shark in a Hawaiian T-Shirt who decides to beat up anyone who badmouths her helps.
• All There in the Manual: Why on Earth did Sulphur come back as an Optional Boss? Well, the game itself implies that it's As Long as There Is Evil; however, meeting a certain Optional Boss in Soul Nomad & the World Eaters reveals that the dimension-crossing ghost witch Lujei from GrimGrimoire sent him back for giggles. So chances are he's just plain dead now. Which makes the overly complicated in-story plan to get rid of him rather tragic, since it resulted in a couple of Heroic Sacrifices. Although Lujei did heal Walnut for giggles too.
  • AND the Unlosing Ranger.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Averted. After Sulphur kills her lover, Scarlet goes to the Netherworld to kill demons until she awakens her power(Wait, this sounds way too familiar...). Marona and crew Time Travel back to prevent her from becoming a demon, but Scarlet still gains the Burgundy power.
  • Marona is one of the few Nippon Ichi heroes who hasn't turned into a demon^note without starting out as one, anyways.
    • ...which doesn't stop her cameoing in Disgaea games.
• Animal Wrongs Group: Spoofed with Canary's monster rights group, Human Activists for Rare Monsters.
• Armored But Frail: Bottlemails have impressive defense stats, but have next to no HP.
• Artificial Brilliance: Certain high-speed enemy types (Catsabers, Mushrooms, Putties, and Scrabbits, just to name a few) can and will attempt to steal your characters' held items to use them against you or throw them off the field, making them unusable for the remainder of the battle (though, in the case of random dungeons, if you can survive that particular floor you'll get the item back).
• Artificial Stupidity: On the other hand, enemies also will accidentally run themselves off the field on slippery/bouncy type maps, target allies when attempting to kill you, or stand around and do nothing when they very well could be attacking anybody.
• Asshole Victim: Many examples:
  • The elder of Terra Firma looks to be the only person in the island who doesn't mind Marona, until he pays her a really meager amount of money by lying about the expenses of the island and laughs under his breath about how he would never dare pay a person like her a lot of money.
  • Canary rips off Marona by giving her a gold membership card for his Animal Wrongs Group for retrieving Putty to his side. Putty then takes the card and warps it away from existence, which is enough to piss him off and reveal his real nature.
  • Any of the dead people found scattered in all the levels of Frigidia may turn on Marona and attack her team despite being revived by her.
  • The elder of Desert Island seemingly doesn't know about Marona's infamous reputation, but at the end of the day, he refuses to pay for her services because she stopped a possessed Bijou instead of the real Raphael, brushing it off as an accident of his part. Raphael, disgusted by his treatment of Marona, decides to really rain hell on the island.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Axes, mid-game. The SPD reduction from early-game Axes is minimal and doesn't hamper a physical character all that much. However, stronger Axes come with worse SPD reductions. In a game in which SPD determines Turn Order, this turns hardy physical characters into paper-weights. Even worse, using Weeds and SPD objects to improve an Axe's SPD will eventually cost astronomically massive sums of Mana the more you try to improve. Axes end up such a risky Mana investment (especially Post-Game) that it's much easier to improve the ATK and SPD of a lesser weapon type than try to improve an Axe 2/3rds of the time. They're outright a detriment in Another Marona, as enemy formations and HP-buffed enemies demand a team faster than their enemies to compensate, forcing even brawlers to make do with daggers and such for a very long time.
  • Using other characters as weapons. Skills that require a character to be lifting another (TossUp, Double Trouble, ETC.) are fun to play around with early-game but will always pale in comparison to the raw power of a single character with a weapon in their hand - especially later on when SPD becomes more important.
• Back for the Finale: Pretty much everyone you ever meet comes back to either help Marona directly or offer support. Even the Zombie Milon from Forestia, who you probably forgot as soon as the Episode was over, sends in an inspirational letter.
• Badass Longcoat: The caustic, Chroma-hijacking rival Walnut sports one.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Ash and Marona pretend to be defeated by Laharl in order to get him to leave them alone. Suffice to say, they're not at all very convincing... but Laharl is pretty gullible and buys it.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Marona is the most kind-hearted necromancer ever, yet she gets ridiculed by many people she tries to help.
• Beast Man: There are weasel-men and shark-men, werewolves and, most prominently, humanoid owls. There's even a whole series of owl player characters; they tend to be slightly weaker than humans, but faster and more agile.
• BFS: Sprout's sword, Shiva, is enormous.
• Big Brother Instinct: Ash and Walnut, to varying degrees. Ash goes out of his way (perhaps a bit too hard) to protect Marona from the harsh prejudice of the outside world and is always the first thing between hostiles and her. Walnut meanwhile is willing to sink to any and every low to ensure Castile has access to medication.
• Blood from the Mouth: Walnut, after overextending himself while fighting to rescue Castile. Not fatal, but leads into his Troubled Backstory Flashback, and illustrates just how unhealthy his lifestyle of drinking, stealing from the most dangerous people alive, and lighting his soul on fire really is.
• Blunt "Yes": Marona to Canary, when Canary indignantly asks her if she thinks he's the one causing harm to the rare monsters he claims to be protecting.
• Blush Sticker: Marona, Carona, and Castile. Some of the cuter enemies have them as well.
• Big Damn Heroes: Sienna at the end of chapter 17. Surprisingly, Walnut also fits this trope, although he was cleaning up his own mess to an extent.
• Bottomless Pit Rescue Service: Marona, Ash, and major enemies will teleport back to the field when thrown out, instead of being automatically defeated.
  • Also, any phantom who's currently taking their turn, and the final enemy on the field, no matter who it might be. (Also, the No O.B. special ability prevents tossing out.)
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: If you create any humanoid who doesn't do a specific task and talk to them, they may randomly say how awesome a Phantom Brave anime would be.
• Break the Cutie: Marona shows hints of this as the story progresses, but it never goes further than that.
  • In the Wii and PSP versions, Another Marona takes Marona not having Ash around to its logical conclusion.
• Brick Joke: An unusual version: the final page of the original strategy guide says "Until we meet again...". Some years later, "We Meet Again" became the first Updated Re-release's subtitle.
• Bullying a Dragon: Marona's affinity for phantoms causes her a lot of grief, but you'd think someone with the reputation for summoning an army of the undead would be the very last person you'd want to openly rip off after they completed a job for you.
• Calling Your Attacks: In spades. Anyone even remotely important to the story calls their next attack, even when they're about to kill you.
• Can't Catch Up: As explained in Awesome, but Impractical above, Phantoms given Axes over a long period of time will become slow to the point that they may not even be able to take a turn at all, making Axes a much riskier investment than other weapons.
  • Phantoms with the negative series of Titles ^note Aloof, Quack, Ruined, Crappy, Failure, and Unliked, respectively end up this by proxy of having their stats greatly reduced to various degrees.
• Cap: Newly created characters have an initial cap of 100 levels...but it's a Nippon Ichi game, so you better believe you can fix that.
• Catchphrase: Ash's pre-battle taunt: "You'll go no further! For her sake, I will not fail!"^note In the Japanese, this is instead the activation phrase for his Chroma skill, Écarlate, but for unknown reasons, every reference to this was scrubbed out of the English — even Écarlate itself was renamed "Solemn Vow" There's also Marona's mantra of "Kitto itsuka," "One day..."
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Yep, Marona. Ash scolds her from time to time for constantly helping the ungrateful.
• Combat Medic: The Mystic class is balanced around physical attacks and healing, with balanced ATK and RES to match.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Take a closer inspection at Turn Order. If one of your patented strategies is to attack an enemy that will move first, there's a good chance that, even if that enemy is K.O.'ed, another enemy will take that turn.
  • That's only one of the ways the computer cheats. Enemy characters stay in play permanently during battle, while your summoned ghosts fade away after about three turns and can't be resummoned.
  • Also, until you've mastered a weapon, you seem to deal roughly 0-1 damage (except with magic, like the healer's Shock); meanwhile, enemies deal 4-6 in early game. This means that the tutorial battle is impossible for just Marona, and since much of the party can't be counted on as steady characters, you're kinda screwed with just Marona.
  • Subverted under "Protection" (which, had you skipped the tutorial, you might miss). It seems that virtually every enemy has this when attacked by most of the party besides the healer and Ash, though.
• Crapsaccharine World: The "cute" characters in the game are disabled, yelled at by angry villagers, are the angry villagers themselves, are harmless fools who get possessed by fragments of demonic souls... and that's not getting into the Putties, who are locked into cages or transported into circuses despite being fully sentient because, well, they can't talk. There's a thousand other things, and if not for tropical setting, the graphics, and the music, this would probably be a Crapsack World.
• Cutlass Between the Teeth: Four-legged characters use this by default, because they obviously have no arms.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to other Nippon Ichi games, like Disgaea, this one is much more serious. There's almost no slapstick or Black Comedy.
• Deader than Dead:
  • Marona can (and the enemies will), by attacking the "body" of one of her phantoms, Soul Kill them. She can still reconstitute it by sacrificing an object (and with a certain item, make the soul stronger). It is implied by dialogue (the evil has lifted and peace fills the air) that this is the right thing to do with Baal when it joins the party after you defeat it as an Optional Boss.
  • This can happen on the maps themselves. Marona herself is immune to soul death.
• Death Equals Redemption: "I am Sprout, master of the Sacred Sword. In death, I have reclaimed my honor." Doubles as a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Bijou (the werewolf who impersonates Raphael on two occasions) refers to Marona as "my Chroma friend". (The fact that she did save him from possession may have helped.) Raphael likewise develops respect for her and her combat skills, and Cauldron the Island Collector loved the way a cute little girl managed to beat up all his hired mooks and claim the island he had set his sights on. (He also keeps calling her "Maronakins" and threatens to beat up anyone who badmouths her.)
• Delayed Narrator Introduction: One of the hints that Sienna, the owner of the island that Marona rents, is more than she seems.
• Dem Bones: The Cerberus generic class, which doubles as being a dog skeleton, is great at casting elemental magic and is a middling physical attacker, but fails terribly at all other skills.
• Demonic Possession: Bijou, though he gets better.
• Developer's Foresight: If you manage to beat Raphael during the fight against him at the end of Chapter 7, the cutscene that follows changes to reflect this, Ash blown away that they managed the feat.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: Sulphur is a demonic monster that nearly killed everyone 30 years ago before being stopped by Scarlet the Brave, and now it's coming back. Nobody knows or asks its origins.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Most of the optional bosses. Especially Sulphur, who suddenly just returns out of nowhere at full power, and the only option Marona and Ash have is to just kill it.
• The Dreaded: Sulphur; the mere mention of him coming back terrifies the entire cast.
• Drought Level of Doom: One of the endgame levels has a severe shortage of confinable objects, greatly limiting your ability to deploy units. Though, of course, you can still bring your own.
• Dub Name Change: Ash's catchphrase for his powers in the Japanese version is roughly translated as: Grant me the power to destroy my foes! The power of the Water Dragon, Eccarlate! For some reason, this was changed to: You shall go no further! For her sake, I will not fail! (This explains why he says it in several cutscenes where the other characters are also activating their powers.)
  • You know Solemn Vow, that passive skill that doubles Ash's Attack and Intelligence on his final turn? In the Japanese version, its name is Eccarlate and the description also adds that it's the Water Dragon's power. His DLC appearince in Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten changed it back to Eccarlate.
• Dump Stat: Per Nippon Ichi tradition, DEF and RES become nigh-useless against most post-game enemies, primarily the Optional Bosses, reducing those battles into One-Hit KO affairs.
  • ....But Subverted this time as certain items and attacks can rely on these stats for their damage^note Rocks, for example, primarily use DEF; while Bread uses HP, ETC., so any tank can become a damage-dealer with enough effort.
• Dynamic Entry: Attaching the ability Big Bang to some characters leads to utter hilariousness, as when they are summoned to the objects, they cause an explosion around them, usually taking out a bunch of the enemies stupid enough to stand around the item you confine them in, or if such an item is not available, the one you throw into the fray. People die.
  • And, if you use it on a certain map with a certain enemy enhancement by using a certain item, that character hits the level Cap.
• Easter Egg: One of the possible randomly generated names for the anthropomorphic owls is Orly.
  • The Snakish Sword, which can be acquired only by doing something most people wouldn't think to do during the one-time-ever tutorial.
• Eldritch Abomination: Sulphur. His mere presence causes numerous monsters to start appearing, and the closer he comes to reviving, the more of his monsters start appearing, and he feeds on hatred and can use it to revive himself if somebody manages to kill him.
• Expecting Someone Taller: If people haven't really heard about Marona, they dismiss her Chroma position for being a child, which irks her a bit.
• Expy: The Mystic class looks exactly like Noir from La Pucelle.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: The Manticore and Dragon Classes. The Manticore looks like a huge, fiery lion and the Dragon is, well, a dragon. But then, if you look at their stats, the Manticore cannot use any skills well at all other than physical magic (and it isn't even great at that), and the Dragon, while it's good, can only stay around for two turns before vanishing. (The maximum amount is 8 — most Phantoms stay around for at least 4.)
• The Fair Folk: Putties. It is later learned that they are not nearly as inhuman as most people think.
• Fallen Hero: Sprout, who in the backstory went from a Knight in Shining Armor to an Anti-Hero reminiscent of Ganondorf.
• Father to His Men: Drab.
• Foreshadowing: "Scarlet is a girl's name." indeed.
• Fighting a Shadow: Wraith is the shadow of Sulphur, and so are the smaller "Summon" monsters. It's assumed Sulphur himself is this when fought as an Optional Boss, but apparently he is just destroyed.
  • Or at least, he will be when Carona finds her Sprout who can destroy the Magenta Core, since the Sulphur in the Alternate Universe is the same one, projected from the Core.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Present, though lightning is considered neutral damage; it's wind that makes up the third element.
• Free Rotating Camera: You can press the shoulder buttons to rotate the camera around in case you need a better view of your surroundings.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Marona can gain power and followers by killing beings and summoning their phantoms, and then absorbing them into herself, her servants, or even her weaponry. The plot completely ignores this in the Cutscenes.
  • The slight tidbit that it costs Bordeaux (the universe's currency) to create Phantoms during gameplay, despite it being established by the plot that Marona is able to create them on her own whenever she wants to. For free, no less.
  • During cut-scenes, Ash can occasionally take on a physical form without the need for Marona to confine him (often when he's protecting Marona or in front of friends). During gameplay, he's like every other phantom and requires Marona to confine him. Also, we only ever see Ash referred to as Marona's Phantom; not the army of Player Mooks that Marona is capable of summoning in gameplay.
  • Marona is trying to accumulate enough Bordeaux to finally buy her island. You can get tons of it by completing missions and replaying old areas, and the actual payment received for your jobs pales in comparison. Still, don't expect any of it to go towards your life's dream.
• Genre-Busting: There's really never been a strategy game quite like this before or since; the dependence on items already in the field to summon your allies is unique in itself, to say nothing of the dozen-or-so wrinkles that come from this, such as the fact that anything can be used as a weapon, including other units or that anything (or anyone) can be merged.
  • It's a turn-based Tactical RPG with ice physics. Nuff said.
• Gravity Master: Those proficient in Space/Time skills are such naturally, but anyone can become one.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Body Swing — "The weapon's a man, man!"
• Healing Shiv: The Mystic (a sort of half-healer, half-fighter class) has two unique abilities where he heals or buffs a friendly unit by punching them, even knocking them back a little. Acupressure?
• He Who Fights Monsters: Sprout. Don't let the name fool you.
• Heroic Mime: Putties are an entire race of Heroic Mimes.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Both Walnut and Sprout.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The fight against Raphael in the Island of Evil. You can win it through some ingenuous level grinding sessions the first time, but if you don't know, it's fine. The story will continue.
  • If you fight the possessed Bijou a second time in Desert Island but Raphael is defeated while you're busy eliminating protections, your units will surely die against him.
• Idiot Hair: Marona, fitting her naive nature.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The Island of Evil, where Marona's parents were killed; we read about it in newspapers as a location where Total Party Kill is common.
• I'll Tell You When I've Had Enough!: Walnut plays this perfectly straight when hit with the question...but the bartender is actually cutting him off because he's out of money. Fortunately(?) Persimmon is there to pick up the tab for the next bottle.
• Improbable Weapon User: Everyone. There's no limit to what anybody can use. Rocks, trees, cacti, their allies, and even their enemies can be used as weapons.
• Improvised Weapon: Literally anything on the map can be picked up and used as a weapon. From swords to flowerpots, to rocks, to trees, to mine carts, to clumps of weeds, to starfish, to the corpses of your enemies, and then some. Oh, and fish.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Anything can be this, given Marona's ability to fuse items; however, the Bragging Rights Reward would be the Divine Sword. There's roughly a 30% chance of you fighting a God at the bottom of a Random Dungeon. If you did 99 Dungeon levels in a row without ever exiting the dungeon, there is a 10-16% chance it will have a Divine Sword. You still need to be able to steal it and Confine it, though.
• Irrational Hatred: Everyone towards Marona. They only fear her powers because they aren't really well-informed, though Sulphur's presence makes many relate him to her.
  • One of the Indigo writers is utterly biased into making wild theories that tarnish Marona everywhere she goes and makes every attempt to blame her for the incidents, even if she put an end to them or was acting for good reasons. He is fired by the end of the game.
• Interspecies Romance: Sienna used to love an Owlman. He got killed by Sulphur.
• In the Name of the Moon/By The Power Of Gray Skull: Every character has a phrase they shout prior to a fight, which generates a Battle Aura. Mostly done by Phantoms, except at the end, when Marona finally gets one. The color mentioned in each phrase corresponds to a spell or technique at their disposal. A player can obtain these for their own use, with some difficulty.
  • Ash and Marona both start with them in their actual skill list. "Chartreuse Gale", Marona's special skill, actually lets her...see and summon phantoms.
• Item Crafting: With souls.
• Jackof All Stats: Any Phantom or weapon can be this statistically with the right fusion set-up.
  • The Putty Smith, Scrabbit, Manticore, and Prinny are this by default, ignoring skill grading.
  • Etna is this out of the recruitable post-game characters.
  • All of the game's recruitable characters (ignoring those gotten in Another Marona) have above C grading in every offensive skill rank.
• Jerkass: Walnut, the Chroma Oxide who doesn't care about robbing people from their jobs. He only has one redeemable trait about what he uses the money for, but...
  • Ringmaster Hamm also.
• Joke Character: The Granny and Old Man classes have horrible stat growth in every area, and "F" rank in almost every kind of skill. (And the skills they have "E" rank in work against what little of a stat set-up they have.) While each of them have a Passive skill they can use on Phantom Isle^note the Granny can bake cookies which can lower a character's Dark Points a bit, while the Old Man can grant EXP to random objects, neither of these skills are frequent or useful enough to justify them taking up a character slot. Oh, and they can only stay on the battlefield for 2 turns. Most units can manage 3 or 4.
  • Any Character given the "Failure" Title becomes this. Until you learn their true function, anyway.
• Karma Houdini: Most of the NPCs who treat Marona terribly for most of the game get away with it by swapping to her side when it turns out only she has the power to defeat Sulphur, and their bad acts go free (though Marona prefers it that way). President Hogg is an exception to this rule, as at the end he atones by vowing to find a cure to Castille's handicap. Walnut also... atones properly.
• Karma Meter: Exists, yet its effect on the plot is almost nil. Killing your own characters will result in a build-up of "Dark Points" for these characters. Mostly bad for Player Mooks, too many and they'll go nuts and hurt your own characters in-between stages. (Neither Ash nor Marona are ever affected by this.) Full dark points actually grants the title "Blsphm" (sic) and the Dark Eboreus Ability (not the strongest ability or title, but still). Dark Points can be cured with cookies. No, really. The "Granny" class has a random chance of baking cookies for a character which reduces Dark Points.
• Killer Rabbit: Practically any class that looks like one can be turned into one.
  • A special mention goes to Baal in a Funguy guise, who, upon being defeated gives his phantom double to Marona. She then tells Ash she's worried he will scare the other phantoms.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Raphael.
• Laser Blade: A Divine Sword on the the ground is just a tubular handle; once a character picks one up, it extends.
• Lethal Chef: Marona. While burning spaghetti is probably not as bad as most examples, it doesn't stop Ash from joking about it.
• Lethal Joke Character: Even character classes that have horrible combat abilities across the board have their uses; Bottle Mails (literally walking bottles) don't fight well but have a very high chance of taking items to which they are confined away with them to Phantom Island, so if you need that item, you're more likely to get it. Slimes are unimpressive except that they have 100% compatibility during fusion, allowing you to mix and match abilities into one, then fuse the Slime into Marona or Ash. The Old Man's ability to randomly grant EXP can level up weapons without expending mana, and so on.
  • Characters with the Blasphemy Title are a subversion. The Title grants the character the HP-reliant "Dark Eboreus" skill, improves all stats across the board, and grants a boost to EXP gains... but plunges every one of the character's Skill ranks to "F." If the character doesn't have some SP under their belt already, gaining SP immediately becomes an uphill battle as long as they carry the title. But, if they have enough SP, you've essentially doubled that character's stats. They become even better if they have high HP, as they can waste enemy mobs with Dark Eboreus.
• Level Grinding: It's Nippon Ichi. There are, however, ways to completely break the game and grind levels like crazy, such as creating a dungeon with a Failure title (enemies will be severely weakened and give no EXP or money, but the bonus EXP from binding Phantoms into objects in its levels will soon become ludicrous). You can also Level Drain any dead character you've brought a Changebook to; they'll gain bonus starting stats which greatly amplifies their successive stat gains each level.
  • If starting Another Marona from scratch, level grinding becomes a must. Another Marona is significantly shorter than its main-game counterpart. The Final Boss is the same level regardless. Do the math. To top it off you don't unlock Dungeon masters to at least exploit the above point until the very end of the scenario.
  • Also, with fusion, combining an object with the Failure title with an object with a much better title gives a much higher stat boost than if you combined two objects with the much better title (though this requires the final step of swapping out the Failure title with the much better title after fusion). If an item is fused with an item with greater stats, the first item gains an increase proportional to the difference. The Failure title reduces all stats by 80%, thus making the difference much greater. After you're done fusing, removing the Failure title will remove the 80% reduction and boost all stats five-fold (or more if you put in a superior title).
• Littlest Cancer Patient: Castille. She's a sweet, yet very ill girl.
• Loophole Abuse: After you defeat Bijou, the werewolf who's been impersonating Raphael the Invincible, on Desert Island, the Elder refuses to pay Marona, on the grounds that the job was to "defeat Raphael", not "defeat the imposter". This comes back to bite him almost immediately, though, as the real Raphael (who is, at this point, one of the few people in Ivoire with genuine respect for Marona) overhears the exchange and starts tearing up the place to teach them a lesson, which also ends up starting the problem the elder thought was happening in the beginning.
• Made of Evil: Sulphur, while we don't know what he is or where he came, he seems to be this since after he's defeated by Sprout, he feeds on Sprout's hatred and possesses him, and even after Sprout's Heroic Sacrifice, he's able to come back.
• Magic Knight: Various classes have the potential to become this; but the Merman, Mystic, Cerberus and Owl Ninja classes are designed with this in mind, possessing moderate ATK and INT, (Or in the Mystic's case, RES) as well as proficiencies to match.
• Master of None: There's only one thing Soldiers are good at: staying power. They hang around on a map longer than any other class. You can add their ability to other characters via fusion, but it costs a ludicrous amount of mana to do so.
  • Somewhat subverted due to the Bonus Point system, but quite a few of the game's "helper" classes that assist you in Phantom Isle (such as the Merchant and Dungeon Monk) tend to suck when used in battle. The Merchant's speed is her only statistically redeeming quality while the Old Man and Granny's combat stats (what little there are) actually work against what little Skill specialties they have. The Dungeon Monk's main use is his "Return" ability to get out of Random Dungeons, and even then, you can simply fuse the ability to Marona.
  • The Manticore is alright with Nature abilities and....that's about it.
• Meaningful Name: There's a purple Scrabbit named "Murasaki" — Japanese for "purple". Also, the two characters who absolutely hate Marona the most are nuts — Filbert and Walnut.
• Message in a Bottle: Marona gets some of her missions this way. The bottle-mail can also be recruited as a monster type if you stack objects high enough on your rooftop.
  • That only gets you one. You need to defeat 20 of them in a Weird dungeon setting to get more.
• Money for Nothing: Bounties for beating levels are paid out according to enemy level, so exploiting 3-2, which has two Scrabbits with a constant "Level-Up" effect attached even once will give Marona more money than she could ever use.
• Mook Maker: Marona's ability to see and control Phantoms manifests as the ability to summon them in battle.
• More Expendable Than You: Walnut.
• Naïve Animal Lover: Canary creates a monster rights group called "Human Activists for Rare Monsters". Its acronym is also what the average monster wants to do to Canary.
• Necromancer: Marona goes without the skull fetishes most have; her phantoms are also tidier than most. There is a traditional one that creates ghosts and zombies who is a mercenary leader in the plot.
  • Interestingly, Marona can summon Phantoms of...zombies and ghosts. They're...un-undead? No, that isn't right...
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Though not exactly heroic for most of the storyline, Walnut invokes this by using his Psycho Burgundy power on Marona while on the Island of Evil. That breaks the final shreds of the seal that bound Sulphur into the void.
• Night of the Living Mooks: Fox, the Puppeteer of the Dead is a more traditional necromancer and can summon his own army.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Practically the driving point behind the entire plot.
• Not Quite Saved Enough:
  • Castille: trapped in Makai Kingdom as a servant of Zetta after a failed attempt to find Walnut's soul. She returns to Ivoire in Phantom Brave Portable, meaning Zetta either sent her back or she found a way out.
  • Walnut: Was not dead during the above search, but transported to the Soul Nomad & the World Eaters universe. Dies in most of the story paths, so possibly dead now. Though it is worth noting that the endings of the main path seem only to differ mostly on what the main character is up to (and many of the endings are referenced in other ones), so he may be alive at the end of the main story no matter the ending. The Demon and Median paths, on the other hand...
  • Marona: Sucked into Disgaea 3's netherworld by Baal, has her Childish Innocence stolen. (Not physical rape, the mental aspect is actually removed.) Joins with Mao's group. But it's implied that Baal did not actually steal anything. So...
    • Disgaea lore implies that the Netherworld is Made of Evil, and as such it probably just corrupted her slightly as she stayed, ala Almaz.
  • Ash: Last seen in Disgaea 2 Video Game Remake DLC "Dark Hero Days", though Marona joins him as well. Where he went by Disgaea 3 isn't known.
    • Both reappear in Disgaea 4 and seem to be back to their old selves.
  • Sulphur: Sent back to Ivoire by Lujei Piche, who also sent Walnut to the Soul Nomad universe. Sulphur apparently dies permanently as an Optional Boss, but the main characters are now paranoid that he will come back again when they least expect it.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: Get that Speed stat up... STAT! Not only is it used to determine how quickly turns come up, it's also used in several damage formulas.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Twice. Bijou (along with every other generic Werewolf in the game) is never seen in human form and is mostly portrayed as a one-man Goldfish Poop Gang. Despite this, he rarely is portrayed as evil until he is possessed. Raphael, meanwhile, is impersonated twice by Bijou (successfully). While nowhere in-game does it state that he is a werewolf, it is heavily hinted at along with this and his troops, the White Wolf Army.
• Palette Swap: For minor PCs. Additionally, switching out Titles will change the color scheme of player characters. Even Ash and Marona can undergo a slight change, though not as drastic as sometimes having black or white hair like the generics do.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • That Snakish sword in the tutorial? It's the only one. In the entire game. The Wii version's New Game Plus allows you to obtain some items again if you missed them the first time, but because tutorial levels won't be available again during a New Game Plus, the Snakish sword will still be lost if you don't obtain it the first time you see it.
  • The freebie bottlemail which you can earn from arbitrarily jumping up to a certain height can be obtained at any time but is most easily done at the very beginning of the game before the tutorial is finished because phantoms can be stacked on top of each other without carrying anything and thus won't follow you.
  • Raphael's Heliotrope, Sprout's Shiva and Carona's Hell Ansas can be disarmed from them and stolen each time you can encounter them. Raphael and Carona have 3 opportunities and Sprout, only one.
  • Eggs and changebooks, while not unique, are only found in a few maps the first time they're done. Beyond that they can only be obtained in Random dungeons being held by Item Gods.
• Player Mooks: Any non-Ash Phantom in the PS2 version.
• Playing with Fire: Walnut and Scarlet the Brave have the power to light their souls on fire.
• The Pollyanna: Again, Marona. She's eventually vindicated.
• Power-Up Full Color Change: There are eight title ranks that each determine the power and color of the phantom you give the title to.
• Power Glows: Accompanied by each character's Battle Cry.
• Pulling Your Child Away: After completing a job in the first chapter of the game, Marona is approached by a owlman child who wants to offer her some candy. Unfortunately, the child's mother quickly pulls the child into her arms, all whilst accusing Marona of trying to do something and telling her to leave. This, of course, is due to Marona's ability to summon phantoms, and her undeserved reputation as "The Possessed".
• Randomly Generated Loot: As with other N1 titles, it gives items random stats. Naturally, it also has a system for leveling them up. You have to go into randomly generated dungeons to level up the titles (adjectives you can equip to an item or character) and fuse two items to increase the level cap.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Count Malt, one of the first few adults to never give Marona the All of the Other Reindeer treatment, even in their first meeting.
• Regal Ringlets: The Archer unit has this hairstyle. Later games from NIS gave her twintails, instead.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Putties, Scrabbits (except for Count Malt), Saber Kitties, and Wisps.
• Rousseau Was Right: By the end of the game, everyone has become a good guy and is working with Marona to save the world from Sulphur. Lujei Piche almost killed all that effort since she sent Sulfur back to Ivoire, but then Marona just kills him period as an Optional Boss. Level Grinding beats The Power of Love.
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • There is a Golem on Frigidia Isle that Scarlet the Brave managed to Seal away. One of Marona's missions has them just checking on the seal, but she ends up just killing the thing.
  • Storyline plot on how Sulphur is beaten. First, Sprout attempts to absorb it and kill himself in the hopes of taking it with him. That fails. The heroes fight it, with Ash attempting a Heroic Sacrifice to keep the creature at-bay. Walnut interrupts and uses up his own life force to pull himself and Sulphur into the abyss between worlds instead, which the Putties finally seal away.
  • In Another Marona, God Eryngi is revealed to have the Sulphur of Carona's world sealed within the enigmatic Magenta Core. He sics it on the party after Carona's Heel–Face Turn.
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: Sprout attempted to do this, by filling himself with darkness and absorbing more and more of Sulphur's shadows. He couldn't stop it in the end, so he committed suicide. Even that didn't kill Sulphur, but weakened it.
• Shout-Out:
  • One foe begins the fight with "Enough talk, have at you!" while another uses "Kazan Monsters, I choose you!". Also, a random name for Owl units is Orly.
  • One of the random things a resident Phantom will say is, "I've tried so hard, and got so far..."
• Spiteful A.I.: The enemies that spend their turns either throwing all the confine-able objects (and your phantoms) off the map or attempting to steal your own Weapons to use against you...or just throw them off the map.
• Stone Wall: Slimes (sans the Shade), Funguy and Zombies are built like tanks and are about as fast. The Mimic makes it even more obvious; having a "defense fetish."
• Supporting Protagonist: While we may be controlling Ash outside of battle and the story is generally told from his point of view, the main focus is Marona.
• Survival Mantra: "One day..." Marona keeps her sanity with those two words. That One Day... everything will be alright.
• Taking You with Me: The "Parting Gift" support ability that damages all surrounding enemies (and objects) once a phantom's timer runs out and they leave the field.
  • Sprout attempts this by killing himself when Sulfur resurfaces through Sprout's body. Walnut also seals himself with Sulfur at the end.
• Theme Naming: Most characters are named after colors, particularly wood hues. Many types of special magic are also named after colors; Marona's ability to use phantoms is "Chartreuse," Walnut uses "Psycho Burgundy," and so on. Even without the wood hues, there are some that fit the color theme.
• Threatening Shark: Subverted. Cauldron, the shark man, gives Marona way more money than he promised, forms a fan club for her, and beats up anyone that badmouths her.
• Tropical Island Adventure: The game is set on a series of tropical islands known as Ivoire.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Oh yeah.
• Ungrateful Townsfolk: Marona is one of the sweetest girls you'll ever meet, but her Chroma powers, which grant her the ability to talk to spirits and bring them to life by possessing inanimate objects, lead just about the entire world to label her "the Possessed," avoiding her at best, outright demeaning her at worst, constantly sending nasty letters to her, and writing articles in the paper to paint virtually everything she does as evil. This is shown most powerfully in the first episode where, after eliminating demons near a village, a small child offers Marona a candy...and then their mother snatches the child away and basically shouts "What were you doing to my child, you evil little monster?"
  • On top of that, on several occasions, people who hire Marona for help actually rescind the payment upon finding out who she is. It all reaches a head midway through the game; one client hires her to stop a rampaging Raphael, and when it's discovered the Raphael in question is a fake, the client refuses to pay her on the grounds that the job requirement was specifically to stop Raphael, not an imposter, before going off on her for being a greedy Chroma. Upon hearing this, the real Raphael, who helped her defeat the imposter, immediately starts going on a rampage in the village to teach him a lesson; when the client then has the gall to beg Marona for help in stopping said rampage, Marona flatly refuses to do anything about it and walks away, leaving the village to Raphael's mercy.
• The Undead: Phantoms have it pretty good compared to most undead. They are confined to either physical objects temporarily that Marona temporarily transmutes into a body or free-wandering on Marona's island, which is pleasant in itself; they can't feel strong sensations like hot or cold, but other than that aren't in any pain. Curiously, there are ghosts and zombies in Marona's universe and Marona can make phantoms out of them too, but not the shadows of Sulphur.
• Untrusting Community: Community? Ha! Try "Untrusting Universe".
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: On Phantom Island, as Ash, you can stomp on Marona, your generic NPC characters, and any other character that appears. In the Wii Version, pressing the Z button allows you to beat up your characters, ranging from a strike to a giant swing throw. The kicker is that by beating the crap out of your own characters is that you gain experience from doing so. With the Changebook, you can use your NPCs to beat up on the main characters, KO them, and level up.
  • Not to mention how "fusion" powers up your skills and items; and consumes one of the beings fused. An easy way to get a quick Title? Summon a cheap Phantom then banish it, and only its Title will be left. You want to double your experience and mana absorbed when you kill enemies and to heal when you take a step? Summon a Slime (they have perfect efficiency with anything in fusion transfer), fuse a high-level item to give it some mana, Summon 50-100 of the beings you want to transfer the skill; fuse them into the slime, and then fuse the slime into the character you want the skill given to.
    • Marona's version of "Transmigration" is... messier than Disgaea. You have to let a Phantom's HP be taken to 0, then its body needs to be destroyed. Then she can reconstitute its spirit into a special item.
• Visual Initiative Queue: On the upper-right hand corner of the battle screen.
• Wave-Motion Gun:
  • You'd be surprised what counts as a wave motion gun when some of the items AND enemies have abilities that resemble a giant death beam when used. This includes dogs, some random plants, and even attached abilities to characters.
  • By fusing abilities such as Balsa Bazooka into a character, anything they can get their hands on (or their bare hands) can become one.
• Weapons Kitchen Sink: As mentioned above, anything you can pick up on the stage can be used as a weapon.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: This makes sense, actually. Since Marona is basically using Summon Magic and is a living human, if she dies and all of her summoned Phantoms die and/or run out of turns, game over. Phantoms cannot permanently die as long as she's around to put them back together. Subverted in the Dungeon Creator: if you manage to win that battle inside the dungeons, even if Marona is knocked out, she will be resurrected at the next level, but with 1HP.
• White Mage: The Healer, Owl Sage, Whisp and Putty Shaman classes.
• With This Herring: Given the community she's surrounded by, Marona starts out empty handed, but can quickly earn her way into a Disc-One Nuke with a little work. This trope comes into play literally if you decide to use a Fish as your weapon.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Hey, look over there! It's a Bottlemail! If I kill 20 of them, I'll be able to summon Bottlemail souls! .....yeah.

We Meet Again and The Hermuda Triangle has examples of:

• A God Am I: Carona is accompanied by a Funguy who claims to be God. He's really the Merchant of Death.
• Alternate Universe: What if everyone just died? Another Marona itself is an Alternate Universe as it diverges from the main game prior to Marona's first job rather than continuing where the game left off. As such, she doesn't know any of the characters she meets at the beginning outside of the reputation they have built up.
• Corrupt the Cutie: Carona is a Darker and Edgier corruption of Marona, to the degree that it's basically stated in-game.
• Dead All Along: Marona was killed in "Another Marona" the same as everyone else. Carona was extended Confining her.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Ash after being accused of pedophilia. A real Funny Moment.
• Dumb Muscle: The side of Sprout you see when he's not running around trying to kill Sulphur and his minions.
• Everybody Lives: Beating the Merchant actually makes him go through with his promise to resurrect everyone he killed. Including Walnut and Sprout.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Subversion: Everybody dies from Marona's world, including Marona herself.
• Evil Twin: Part of Carona's training is having the new cast fight their old bodies, with the shadows of Sulphur confined within them.
  • Carona herself; the "Another Marona" is somewhat a subversion. A Marona who grew up without Ash, who became very, very dark. A continuous theme, though, is that "Marona is Marona." This is the same Marona as the heroine, who just had different things happen to her in her life.
• Fake Difficulty: Most of the maps in Another Marona rely on level-pumping enemies and multi-mob affairs that enforce Level Grinding as opposed to any real strategy. That said, Protections become much more important.
• Flanderization: Sprout, whose primary trait goes from badass to Dumb Muscle. In the primary story, the latter is just barely visible.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Though when you first face Carona, she isn't terribly overpowered (but instead has an army of Mooks to face you), the next cutscene assumes she's beaten you. Comes with a bit of Gameplay and Story Segregation, as many players will face her in a New Game Plus, where she is easily defeatable.
• Laughably Evil: God Eryngi's feeble attempts to convince the main characters that he's God at the beginning of the storyline by shouting such phrases as "I'll curse you!" repeatedly and shouting that he's obviously God are actually rather hilarious, and the fact that he's an angry-looking bearded mushroom contribute to this effect. It doesn't last.
• Love Redeems: Carona, at the end of the story, practically loses her Anti-Hero tendencies due to her friendship with Marona and Ash.
• The Man Behind the Man: An interdimensional diabolist named "The Merchant Of Death" controls Sulphur with an evil artifact called the Magenta Core.
• Omnicidal Maniac: The Merchant of Death doesn't care how many worlds he kills, as long as he gets another weapon to add to his growing collection.
• Morality Chain: Carona is from a world where Ash didn't become a Phantom, and she was left all alone in a world that hated her when she was 5 years old. She's not as crazy as many, and she's still trying to save her world, but it takes a combination of this world's Marona and Ash to get her to open up.
• New Game Plus: A new addition to the Wii and PSP version, characters from Another Marona can be carried over to the main storyline and vice versa. Of course, their effect on the actual plot is nil.
• No Ontological Inertia: The Merchant of Death's curse that killed everyone on the planet is removed if he wills it or on his death.
• Soul Jar: The Magenta Core.
• Stripperiffic: Carona.
• Super Title 64 Advance: Played straight with the Japanese title of the game, which is simply Phantom Brave Wii and Phantom Brave Portable.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After Carona goes home, back to her lonely island, she gets a letter from Castille's father asking for help, implying that she will be befriended by Castille in her world as well.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Sprout took multiple levels in dumbass and underwent Badass Decay at the same time.
• Training from Hell: Carona subjects Marona and crew to this. The point is to help them survive against the Merchant of Death.
• Updated Re-release: We Meet Again features updated graphics with remastered levels and backgrounds, adds a new "Another Marona" chapter to the game, more items, and new recruitable characters. The Hermuda Triangle has all of the features of the Wii version along with more characters added to the game.
• Worf Had the Flu: If how much stronger Sulphur is when he's fought as an Optional Boss is any indication, he was definitely this when fought during the main story; it's implied that since everybody saw him coming this time, they got him before he regained all his strength.
• Xanatos Gambit: Carona is training Marona and crew to either kill the Merchant or else become his slaves; either way, her Ivoire is saved. Marona convinces her to put more at risk.

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